Bartzokas: «We played without ego»
The coach of Olympiacos, Giorgos Bartzokas, appeared to be absolutely satisfied with his players' mentality in the second part of the game, and also thanked our team's fans who made their presence noted in the tribunes.
"First of all, I would like to talk about the atmosphere. Many fans came and we saw a good game played, especially on our part. We also had our own fans here to support us and we thank them for that. For us, it was a very good opportunity to close the first round with such a game, in such an atmosphere. We had been alert, because Alba has a good momentum right now. They beat Barcelona recently and we knew we could not be relaxed in this game. To be frank, we were kind of relaxed in the first half. We knew the rhythm would be really important. However, we were hasty when attacking, we gave only 5 fouls and despite having the ability to stop the transition, they scored nine threes in the first half and we ended up trailing by 3 at the end of the first half. We finally though won by 30 and that's because we did a very good job in the second half. Our defense was really compact and we passed 30 assists. Any coach that watches his team dishing so many assists and playing without ego, with this mentality, is a happy one. Happy New Year to everyone and all the best to Alba and coach Gonzalez".